ESPN college football analyst Rod Gilmore, who also is an attorney in a corporate law practice, isn't the biggest celebrity in his family. That honor belongs to his wife, Marie Gilmore, who is mayor of Alameda, Calif., on two islands on San Francisco Bay. They both attended Stanford, where Rod was a defensive back, and Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. After calling Friday night games for several years, Rod has joined Bob Wischusen and reporter Quint Kessenich on a new Saturday broadcast team. They will call the OSU-Mississippi State at 2:30 p.m. Saturday on KOCO-5. Gilmore discussed the game and his career in a telephone interview.

I guess the neat and fun thing is that when my wife and I are about town, everyone wants to talk to her about politics. No one wants to talk to me about football.

How do you work in your law practice in the fall when you're on the road a lot covering football?

I can't do as much heavy lifting in the fall as in I do in the rest of the year. Technology makes it possible to stay in touch, whether it's conference calls or getting documents emailed to me. My partners do a great job of stepping in and managing things. It's not that crazy.

What's your impression of OSU's opener Saturday?

First of all, I just think that it's great that Week 1, we have so many great games. We're so used to having the paycheck games to kick off the season. Week 1 is usually pretty boring. We've got our matchup, Big 12-SEC, you got TCU-LSU and Alabama-Virginia Tech.

As for our game, I think one of the keys is getting look at the contrasting styles. You've got the up-tempo spread offense from Oklahoma State — as good as any offense as we've seen the last few years — against a big, physical, SEC-style of methodical play. That contrasting style is interesting. And folks have talked for years about the SEC dominance and superior physical play. This is kind of a nice way to see how it matches up against one of the better, if not the best team, in the Big 12.

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Mel Bracht is a copy editor on the presentation desk and also covers sports media. A 1978 graduate of Indiana University, Bracht has been a print journalist for 34 years. He started his career as sports editor of the Rensselaer (Ind.) Republican...